


let me put your flowers on.

by YouLookGoodInLeather



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: BDSM, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Illness, Mental Instability, Power Play, dom!Mor, dub-con, pain and magic, post ACOWAR, sub!Azriel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-06 07:39:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10329479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouLookGoodInLeather/pseuds/YouLookGoodInLeather
Summary: Why is it that in a time of peace, they both are falling apart?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ABookAndACoffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABookAndACoffee/gifts).



> This will be long. This will not be gentle. All chapters save this one will be far from clean.  
> Special thank you to @abookandacoffee for dragging me down into the Moriel Dumpster, for reassuring me on how to write them, and for being the Meta-Ho to end all Meta-Ho's. 
> 
> It is for her that I set these two and all that they hold dear on fire.

'No damnation ever looked as cozy as this,  
but you fit over his hips like they  
were made for you.You fit, you fit, you fit.  
On top of him, you are an ancient god  
that only he remembers and he  
offers up his skin.  
And you take it.  
Who knew sacrifice was so profane?'

\- _Profane, Ashe Vernon_     

    i. sensitive

 

It all started out as a joke.

Azriel sat at his desk, Mor perched upon it beside him with her legs crossed, not caring that the slit in her dress exposed her thigh right up to her upper hip. He’d seen it all before.

“I’m just _saying_ that I’d prefer her to find some other way to show how comfortable she is around me,” he said whilst he finished writing his letters, which were no longer filled with politics and war, but rather amity and peace. Wedding invitations, to be more precise, to unite the High Lord and Lady of the Night Court in that oh so human tradition. “Preferably one less physical.” 

“That’s why you think she keeps elbowing you in the ribs when you piss her off?” Mor said, watching him write in his neat, elegant hand. “Pretty sure she just wants to remind you that she can beat you up, now that she’s proven she can take Cassian down.” Az smirked at that, as did Mor, and for a moment they shared a sadistic smile. “You’re perfectly justified to be scared of her.” Azriel snorted.

“Terrified of Nesta Archeron, the Unstoppable Force borne of the Cauldron? I’m afraid I’ve endured worse. Worse, even, than her merciless elbowing.”

Mor laughed, and even Azriel chuckled low under his breath, the sound as warm and soft as the candlelight flickering upon the desk. It was the middle of winter, and after the siege on Velaris, most of the heat spells and wards had been shattered. Thus, Azriel had lit a low-burning fire in the far corner of the room. The only other light was cast by the dying stub of a thick yellow candle at his desk, the flame magically enhanced so that it glowed bright and clear, flooding the whole room as if it were day, save for the shadows that shifted lazily around Azriel’s body. Side by side, cooped up amongst the firelight and stacks upon stacks of book, Mor couldn’t help but feel so cosy, so content, that she let her guard down; She forgot to hold onto the tension that had clung to her whenever she was around Azriel these past few years.

To stop her mind slipping down that over-worn path, she forced a wicked smile. “ _Awhhh_ , poor baby bat, being bullied by a little girl not even half his age,” she crooned, reaching over and ruffling his hair. “Is she being mean to you, Az?” Leaning closer, she knotted her fingers into his satin smooth hair with some difficulty, so silken and fine the texture, and gave it a good firm tug. “Did the nasty little girl _hurt_ you?”

It was only teasing. He and Cas roughhoused all the time, and she’d always made sure to tease them both on a daily basis as was healthy for their egos. This time though, something was different. Something happened.

“Az. Did you see-” Her words caught in her throat as she gave his hair another pull.

“Mor, _stop_ ,” he said, too quick for it to be nothing. Jerking away from her, he ran his fingers through his hair thrice and avoided her gaze. He’d hunched over, squirming in his seat with his face flushed dark. For someone in charge of spying and deception, he was appalling at acting. “Or do you want me going bald early?” 

“Az,” Mor said, looking right at him and ignoring his attempt at humour, “what _was_ that?” No matter what super shadowsinger cover-up bullshit he tried to pull now, she knew what she’d seen. As she’d tugged at his hair, the shadows that ebbed and flowed around him had reacted. She’d almost missed it the first time it had been so fleeting, but the second time it lingered longer, confirming she wasn’t going mad. As if suddenly possessed, the substanceless darkness around Azriel had swelled in a flash, curling and distorting into a mess of strands, forming spikes and swirls and shapes that she couldn’t possibly document in the brief half a second they had lasted.

“Leave it, Mor,” he said with a sigh, drawing his chair away from her and resuming his writing. “It’s nothing.”

“Nothing?” Mor slipped from the desk and reached out again, freezing when he flinched back from her outstretched fingers, as if she had tried to hurt him. She would never- “Azriel, please. Tell me what that was. Are you hurt. Are you sick? You’ve been beaten bloody a hundred times in battle, and that has never once happened before. 

He said nothing, not a word. A terrible, terrible tightness began to clench her chest so that she couldn’t smile and laugh it off, she couldn’t even quite breathe normally. Since the war had ended, everything had been too calm, too peaceful, too happy. Though she’d tried to enjoy it like the others, tried to finally relax, she’d spent the months of maritime with a strange sickness in her stomach, a feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Things had never been happy for her, never safe. She didn’t know how to turn off her instinct to be on high alert, and now it had latched onto whatever Azriel was keeping from her. Times of peace, she’d learnt, never lasted.   

“Is it- is it your head again? Are the thoughts- Az, Az this happened last time. Remember when you tried to just shut us all out? Remember how that worked out last time?” Her voice grew louder, higher. It felt so surreal to think that just minutes ago they’d been warm and giggling in candlelight, and now she could feel the sting of tears in her eyes as memories of what had happened before came flooding back. 

Months of complacency and domesticity had made her vulnerable. This was not how The Morrigan handled things. “Az,” she said, swallowing, “you will tell me what’s wrong, right now. Because I will not - I cannot - go through that again. I’m not walking in to find you-” She couldn’t even finish her sentence. How weak she’d let herself become.

“Mor.” He caught her hand, a rare moment, for once initiating physical contact between them. All of a sudden she felt acutely the pain of the distance he had kept between them so diligently these past years. She thought she’d been immune to it, so good at smiling and flirting with everyone but him just to show that _of course_ she didn’t care. The ache was all coming out now. She hadn’t even known it was there. “Mor, it’s not that. I swear it.”

She knew him well enough to know he spoke the truth - though a voice in her head reminded her that she’d felt that way before, and yet she’d known nothing, such nothing she’d felt like a newborn child. However, his words eased the panic. She resumed her armour, straightening, swallowing the lump in her throat.

“Then tell me what’s going on Az. I’m worried about you.” She gave him a bashful grin to show him that she would hold herself together now. “You’re not going to give the Maid of Honour even more to worry about now, are you? I’ve got so many dresses and flowers and cursed napkins to pick out that I think adding anything else to the list may kill me.”

Only through an epic display of willpower did Mor manage to refrain from crying in the long, long silence that followed. She knew with Az though that sometimes she just had to give him time to work through the clashing forces in his head, to untangle the shadows that whispered to him. “You’re going to fret about this forever if I don’t tell you, aren’t you?” He sighed when she nodded. “Fine. But it’s not- remember you asked for this.”

Fidgeting, Azriel pushed back his chair to face her, though he kept his eyes fixed on the letters he was fiddling with. “It’s not- Cauldron, Mor, this is _personal_ . What happened, it wasn’t because I’m sick or anything.” He scowled at stray sheet as he curled and uncurled the corner. “My shadows, they just… they just act weird like that when I’m…” To Mor’s total surprise, Azriel was blushing. “Cauldron Mor, _when I’m turned on_.”

Mor blinked. “When you’re- but…” How could she even begin to process that? Though The Court of Nightmares had forged an excellent diplomat out of her, she stammered uselessly, only to blurt out, “But we’ve slept together.”

“Yes,” Azriel said tightly, now crushing the nib of a pencil into the desk so hard he was probably leaving a dent.

“And your shadows never-” She couldn’t believe they were having this conversation. “Did you not enjoy it when we fucked?”

Hearing it aloud, Mor could understand why Azriel groaned and buried his head in his hands. They had avoided this subject matter ever since they had ended their romantic relationship long ago, and had both done an impeccable job of pretending the entire affair had never even happened. Speaking of it alone made her cringe, but addressing their past sex life was another level of hell all together. “No, Mor. We both know our sex life was never the problem,” he said through gritted teeth. “But- oh for fucks sake.”

Sitting up, he looked up at her and held out his arms as if to invite her judgement upon his person “Sometimes Mor, I get really fucking turned on by pain. Especially when it’s inflicted by… by certain people. Saying certain things. Looking at me with certain eyes.” He sounded like he was being strangled. “Cauldron. I can’t believe you- Why am I having to discuss this with you?”

“But.. you never said anything about that when we…”

“I didn’t know back then,” Azriel said, slumping back in his chair. “I still don’t really. I’ve only- a couple of times- it’s been…” Shaking his head, he shut himself up and turned back to his desk and picked up his papers, signalling that the conversation was over. However, Mor wasn’t leaving it there, no chance. 

“Okay. So you’re not sick. Which is good. And you’re- well, you’re having fun enjoying yourself-”

“Mor, I swear if you speak about it like that I can and will tie you up with a pretty little ribbon and deliver you in a box to the Bone Carver.” Mor hadn’t heard Azriel this emotive in ages, his tone scathing. His cheeks and ears were burning up, his wings twitching - he looked so exposed, so vulnerable, so the opposite of his usual unreadable self. Mor felt… she didn’t know how to name it. A kind of turning in her stomach, an itch in her muscles, a restlessness that even in all her years, she’d never known. Not knowing how to describe it, she ignored it, and settled on using humour to try smooth this whole thing out instead.

“Kinky.” 

Scowling, Azriel actually rolled his eyes like a stroppy teenager and then resumed writing. He was going a little heavy on the use of body language to tell her to _fuck off_ , in Mor’s opinion, but she got the message. For a long time she managed to stay silent, before curiosity got the best of her. “And you really had no idea whilst we were…?” The look he gave her was positively murderous.

“No, not really. Nothing that I wanted to talk about. And nothing that I want to talk about now.”

“But I’m curious!” Mor couldn’t help it as she grinned, she really couldn’t. Even though she’d had this man as a lover, the way he presented himself publicly seemed so asexual, so statuesque, that outside of a romantic relationship, discussing sex with him seemed incredibly novel. “And it’s perfectly healthy to talk about these things, rather than locking them away in a corner of shame. It’s completely normal, Az-”

“No. No, it’s not.”

Something about the way he spoke killed her smile. She’d heard that voice before. It reminded her of finding him awake at three am, staring at the ceiling beside her, of trying to get him out of bed in the morning when they had days of. It felt like black holes and even blacker ice. She could not stand to hear it from him.

Her fun and games quite dead, Mor contemplated leaving. However, a few things still bothered her.  “I still don’t understand: Why did your shadows not go haywire when we were together?”

“I don’t know.” Az put the pen down when she cleared her throat, and looked up at her with eyes so childlike she had to fight the urge to touch him again. “Honestly. They only seem to start doing that when it’s tied into both aspects: the pain and- and the other one.”

“Huh. Interesting…”

Hesitating over returning to his work, it was him this time that forced a smile. “And now, we are never going to speak of this again.” Teasing: he was teasing her. That she could work with, that she knew. Though she’d been the one to criticise him for it, she was just as scared of venturing into the darkness that surrounded him in more ways than one.

“Am I not even allowed to make one joke about how Nesta is accidentally pandering to your kink?”

“Only if you tell me first what animal you’d like our mutual friend to make out of your bones first.”

“Okay, good to know.”

The smile they shared was only a little strained this time. When Azriel sighed, Mor worried no more than usual about his welfare. “As fun as being interrogated and humiliated has been, I really do need to finish these papers. In quiet. Alone.” This time, she felt okay about leaving him alone.

“Alright Grumpybat. I’ll see you in the morning for cake tasting.”

“Can’t wait.”

Inevitably, as she returned to her own quarters, Morrigan couldn’t help overthinking what had been said. Quite unexpectedly, her thoughts didn’t catch on her concern for Azriel, but rather on what he had confessed. Though she had tried to think of him as no more than a friend since they had split, she found her mind slinking down into the dark, conjuring images of him and his indulgences in its wake. Upon reflection of tugging his hair, she lingered not on how his shadows had behaved strangely, but on what she had first missed: the way his grip had tightened, the hitching of his breath, the sharp arching of his back. If only a simple tug could do all that…

  
No. She wasn’t going back there. She couldn’t, and they both knew why.


	2. Chapter 2

'i don’t pay attention to the

world ending.

it has ended for me

many times

and began again in the morning.'

\- _salt. nayyirah waheed_

     

 

        **ii. ~~in~~ toxic ~~ated~~**

 

When the High Lord of the Night Court has a stag night, things are always bound to end up somewhere dark. Or at least, that was the terrible pun Mor told herself as she wriggled out of her bra. The flood of alcohol she’d consumed didn’t help.

She only remembered how they’d ended up there in a hazy, series-of-blurred-vignettes kind of way. There’d been singing, dancing, more singing, and drinking. Lots and lots of drinking. A long night and early morning spent constantly trying not to picture Azriel and his expression when she’d pulled his hair, Azriel catching his breath just _so_ , Azriel breathless and so beautifully exposed-

“Fuck,” Azriel said as he fumbled with his underwear, fingers made clumsy by booze, completely ignorant to the fact that she was imagining him in the height of sexual ecstasy. Not that she would be considered strange for it now, given how they’d just locked themselves in her bedroom. They weren’t thinking straight. They weren’t remembering their promises.

“Let me,” Mor said, her voice slurred. She stumbled forward and ‘helped’ him remove them with a sharp tug down, nearly knocking him off of his feet in the process. “Fuck.”

“Fuck.”

“Jinx,” he said, grinning. He hadn’t smiled like that in years, the expression devious, excited, and so _young_. Booze, when he finally let it liberate him, shed years from his ancient eyes. She couldn’t resist reaching out, stroking his cheek as she looked back at those eyes. How she wanted to protect them, him, that expression.

The moment of tenderness was quickly swallowed by the alcohol haze. Instead she drank headily from the sight of him shirtless, the smooth, hard plains of his angular chest, nothing to him but lean muscle and bones.

He’d always been skinny compared to Cas’s hulking mass and Rhysand’s lordly broadness, she knew that, but in the dim light of the stars shining through the open windows, she could have sworn Az was thinner than ever. Still fit and cut like a warrior, but his collarbones were so pronounced, his hipbones defined like a statue’s. Sober, she’d be worried, but in her drunken state there was something arousing about his over-pronounced bone structure, the graphicness of his sharp angles and shadows.      

“I’d worry about you if you weren’t so fucking hot,” Mor said under her breath. Drinking always gave her a filthy tongue. He stood there before her, letting her study his naked body lit by the stars, shyly fidgeting.

“Mor,” he said, and the fragility in his eyes turned to something else, something wanting.

She was all set to dive into this terrible, terrible mistake and regret it in the morning when she caught herself. The thought that never once had she truly turned him on turned her stomach. Never before had she purposefully sent those shadows - the most intrinsic, instinctual part of him - into overload. Never before had she reached in and brushed up against his soul.  

Fuck it. If they were going to do this and have terrible, worst-idea-ever drunk sex, she was going to make it the best drunk sex he’d ever fucking had. Sne was taking his breath away on purpose this time. She was going to make him _scream_.

“Get on the bed,” she said, surprised by the authority in her voice. It appeared he was too, eyes widening briefly before he complied and backed up, falling back to perch on the edge of the sheets. The starlight cast everything in shades of blue and white, but she could still see his cheeks darkening, the hunger in his eyes, wordlessly driving her on.  Though they had more baggage than Mor could keep track of, she knew him better than anyone. She could read the unspoken words upon his face. He was practically begging for it.

It had never been like this. Not once when they’d fucked before had he been open to it, asking for it. He’d always been so sensitive towards her, so cautious not to push her or to expect that she should want to lavish herself upon him. Always, he’d seemed to feel so undeserving, so ashamed of himself when met with the sight of her bare before him. Now though, it was different. Though they’d never spoken of it again, as promised, they both knew what he wanted. She was more than happy to give; she was burning to do it.

Striding over to him, she shoved him back into the silken bedsheets, hands pushing him by the chest. “Stay down,” she ordered crisply. He obeyed without protest, his breathing fast and shallow. His wide-eyed expression suggested he barely recognised her with this sudden change in demeanor. She barely recognised herself.

Placing a hand upon his abdomen to press him firmly down, she straddled him with swift efficiency despite the alcohol in her system. A rush of adrenaline seemed to have bestowed upon her a degree of sobriety, though she could never imagine doing _this_ without being thoroughly intoxicated. And yet it was with perfect ease that she slipped into her new role for the night.

“Look at you,” she said, her voice low and mocking. “So wet and hard already. It’s pathetic.” As she spoke, she took his cock into her hand and stroked the shaft back and forth, in time with the cooing rhythm of her sing-song words. “Call yourself a professional? How can a member of the inner circle be this sensitive-?” She squeezed the head of his penis to prove her point, digging the fingertip of her forefinger into the groove of his glans and teasing circles out as she slicked him up with fresh beads of precum.

It was as easy as teasing him in front of the others, though her words were far crueller, far closer to home. Part of her worried that she was hurting him, but the stiffening of his cock beneath her touch assured her she was doing quite the opposite. At her words, he closed his eyes and tipped his head back, shuddering with uncertain, heavy breaths. The shadows around him responded, shifting, like a cat stretching itself out, unwinding and then recoiling. Her mouth went dry. “Mor,” he whispered. “Mor. Mor, please-”

“Please?” She laughed, the sound so cruel, so degrading, and the sense of release she felt at being so utterly vile sent a deep, thrumming thrill through her that was so sexual, so satisfied, that she knew she’d never forget this. She’d never be able to block from her mind how disgustingly turned on she’d been at the idea of telling Azriel he was shit. Where had this come from? And why, now that it was leaking from her every pore, couldn’t she stop it? “Please? So desperate already, are we? Do the people you torture beg so easily?”

She’d taken a step too far. Speaking of those things, of what he had to do behind closed doors, crossed an invisible line for Azriel, she could tell. He whimpered, but this wasn’t one of pleasure, it was a cry, the kind she’d heard wounded animals make, and from him, the man she valued above all others - it tore a part of her soul. They should have discussed this all beforehand. They should have talked about what they were doing. But they were drunk, and she was _hungry_.

“Az,” she said, worry dragging her out of the moment. “Az, are you-”

“Don’t stop,” he said, quick, desperate, really begging now. “Don’t stop. Please. Please don’t stop.” His voice broke on the last please, and the hole in her heart ripped wider. She swallowed. Wished she could have another drink.

“Beg harder, bat boy,” she said, tightening her grip on his cock as she pushed up onto her knees. “Show me how much you just can’t help yourself.”

He groaned, whether from her touch or her words she knew not which. “Please. Please Mor, please.” This time he didn’t sound hollow, like he might break at any moment, and she relaxed. This she knew, despite never having played the game before.

“Please what? What do you want, slut?” She’d been called that so many times, by so many foul, foul people. Never had she imagined herself using the term, and certainly never for Azriel, a man and friend.

“Oh Cauldron, Mor, please. I want you to- to fuck me,” he gasped the confession as if the room was without air, though a chilling draft breezed in through the open window, icy against both their skins but not unwelcome, for Mor felt as if every fibre of her being were aflame.

“Oh _my_. What a filthy thing to say. Well, slut, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.” With his cock still clenched in one hand, the thumb of which was kneading the head of his penis, Mor leaned down and brought her lips to his ear. Taking her free hand, she knotted her fingers in his silken hair, remembering that night in the candlelight with a sense of disorientating dejavu. Spurred on by the alcohol, she pulled, hard.

“I’m going to fuck you, bat boy. But not until I’ve had you begging through tears for me to go harder, to hurt you harder. Because we both know that’s what you want. And I’m going to get you to scream it for the whole of Velaris.” The words flowed like water freed from a damn, tumbling out one after another from a part of her she’d never known had existed. Paranoia screamed at her to shout at him that she didn’t mean a word of it, but that ferocious itch drove her on. Not to mention how broken he’d looked when she’d tried to back peddle. She couldn’t leave him like that. She’d never been able to stand watching him ache. Somehow, this kind of hurting him was different. He seemed to revel in it.

“Fuck, Mor-”

“You want that, bat boy?”

“Yes,” he said, his eyes screwed shut as she rubbed his cock, her grip tight. “Oh fuck- Mor, please. Fuck me. I don’t think I can-”

“If you come before I say you can,” Mor said in a feather light whisper, smiling softly, “I won’t touch you again. Deal’s off.”

Azriel flat out whined. His bare legs were taut, the thick muscles underneath locked with the strain, and his hands had wrapped themselves up in the bed sheets. He panted as she toyed mischievously with his penis, cupping and circling his balls with her little finger, but held strong, precum the only fluid slicking her palms. “Good boy,” she crooned, running two fingers of her other hand down his jaw, the others still tied into his hair. “Not such a total slut after all then, it seems.

“And we can’t be having that now, can we?” Rocking forwards, she guided his swollen cock into the slit between her legs, already soaking from the sight of him twisting and moaning before her. That had all been nothing compared to the noise he made then, a wordless cry that spoke of being so overwhelmed, so aroused that he could no longer form words. Back when they’d been together, he’d always been quiet in bed, or spoken to her in nice, clever sentences that had seemed witty and charming at the time. They’d been nothing compared to this utter abandon, however.

Gripping his hair tight, Mor sat up. Looking down at him, sitting across his hips, she stared drunkenly at the sight of him splayed before her, sweating and breathless and hers to do with as she pleased. No more awkward distance or unaddressed silences. It was all out in the open now.

She rocked her hips back and forth and rode him for the first time. Despite the newness of it, she was not gentle. Nor would she be, when every time she tightened against him or twisted for friction, the shadows surrounding them grew. They’d filled the room now, curling in swirling waves that shuddered and lashed out in response to her every touch, every sharp tug upon his hair. She was wet enough that he slid into her effortlessly, but she made up for it as she slammed down against him, eliciting a whimper. “Oh,” he said, even her name lost in his intoxication now. “ _Oh_.” Did he know what those stray, kittenish moans did to her, did to her insides? Did he know that she could barely hold herself back from coming?

“Once more,” she panted, doubled over with the effort of holding onto what sanity she’d retained. Her fingers were covered with a thick sheen of sweat and cum, those in his hair struggling to hold on as he pulled back against her, the strands taut and straining against his scalp. “Say it once more. Beg me.”

“Please, Mor. _Fuck me_. Please.”

She came. It was like a thousand starfalls in her head. The adrenaline, the alcohol, and the scorching heat all combined to blind her, her vision flashing with spots brighter and more numerous than all the starfalls she’d witnessed put together. In a rush she sucked in breath, riding through the orgasm atop him as he came just after her, taking that as permission to come. She usually prided herself on having excellent sexual stamina, but that orgasm knocked it right out of her, her breath collapsing.

“Cauldron,” she breathed. She thought she might be going into shock. Her body felt as if it was literally humming, her very bones vibrating with the lingering afterglow of the orgasm. Beneath her, Azriel looked as stunned as she felt, wide eyed and with his lips parted. His hair was a total fucking mess from her using it like her own personal set of reins, and she had to admit he looked fucking hot like this, all dishevelled and shell-shocked. Especially since she knew it was all by her hand.          

“Fuck, Az,” she mumbled, pulling him out of her somewhat awkwardly, before she rolled over and collapsed beside him on the bed. She had never been so exhausted in her life, not even after the war. Even her bones felt tired. “What the hell was that?”

“I… I don’t know,” he said, quietly. Around her, the room was spinning. She could feel the beginnings of a hangover creeping in, and somewhere in the distance, she could feel the crushing regret of all that had happened lurking, waiting to pounce. In that delicate moment, however, she felt strangely immortal.

“Whatever I say tomorrow, that was some fucking great sex.” She stared up at the ceiling, and beside her, he did the same. He didn’t answer for a moment, and she worried she’d actually hurt him, with her cutting words or her rough touch. Glancing over, she saw that he was grinning.

“Agreed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I came to this dumpster of a pairing so set things on fire. I did warn you.


	3. Chapter 3

iii. cold

 

'Black sweet blood mouthfuls,   

Shadows. 

Something else 

 

Hauls me through air—

Thighs, hair; 

Flakes from my heels.'

\- _Ariel, Sylvia Plath_  


 

“You all look like you had fun,” Feyre said the next morning over breakfast. Cassian groaned loudly from where he sat slumped over on the table, his face planted against the polished marble. 

“Why does my head hate me so much?” He whined, screwing his eyes shut and moaning theatrically. 

“Serves you right,” Nesta sniffed, having refrained from joining in the previous evening’s festivities to keep the bride to be company. “We could hear you two singing from all the way up here.” 

At one end of the table, an uncharacteristically dishevelled Elain blushed pink beneath her freckles, ignoring Cassian as he tipped his head up to grin at her. “We did make a pretty awesome musical duo, huh Elain? Of course, thanks must be given where it’s due: to our noble High Lord for his  _ shocking _ attempt at keeping a beat.” 

“I have courtiers to play music for me,” Rhys said with a wave of his hand. He’d at least changed out of last night’s attire, unlike Cassian, but he had yet to wash away the penis someone had drawn upon his cheek, which rather ruined his attempt to appear aloof. Rubbing his temples, he continued, “If I had a sense of rhythm I’d be even  _ more _ deliciously irresistible. We’d have a veritable riot on our hands. No, I’m afraid I had to allow myself some small weakness, just to keep the hormonal hordes at bay.”  

“Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer just to get married to yourself, darling?” Feyre asked politely, taking his hand in hers. Rhys and Cassian continued to quip back and forth over the matter, but she looked down the table. She looked right at Mor.

“You’re awfully quiet this morning, Mor,” Feyre said, her voice innocent, light, masterfully pitched to cover any probing curiosity. Damn Rhys for training her so well. 

“Yeah, what happened to you last night?” Cassian piped up. Mor cursed the cauldron for not even a throbbing hangover being capable of silencing the illyrian bastard. “You and Az vanished right after Rita’s.” 

“I wasn’t feeling well,” Mor answered with a tight smile, refusing to look at her partner in crime. “Az insisted he make sure I got back okay. We didn’t want to, uh, risk interrupting the masterpiece you three were composing.” Despite her own piercing headache, she thought she did a rather good job of smiling and nodding politely when they all voiced their concern and sympathies, and she readily accepted the glass of water from Elain, if only to have something to fiddle with. At last, she risked looking over at the man opposite her. 

Azriel had vanished by the time she’d awoken at dawn. Now, he sat without a trace of what had passed visible upon him, freshly washed, dressed, and combed. To someone who didn’t know him as well as she did, he’d appear as internalised and unreadable as ever. However, over the years she’d picked up on the minute, subtle signs he let slip that gave away hints of what lay beneath the surface. She recognised the ever so slight too tight tightness of his lips, how he wasn’t watching Elain as protectively as he usually did, and how he oh so coincidentally never once looked to her. She didn’t know if she was grateful or not. 

The others all slowly perked up, refreshed by cold water and impressive stacks of pancakes and crispy bacon, Cassian eating at least half of the morning’s offerings. Mor found herself no longer hungry in the slightest, though she feigned interest in her toast to cover how closely she was watching Azriel. He really was a master at concealing his emotions when he wanted to be, yet she hoped to discern how he felt about last night. If he remembered what they’d done.

What she’d said. 

Just as she felt her cheeks pooling with heat at that memory, he glanced up at her. It lasted barely a second before he pushed his chair back. “I’m going back to bed,” he said, nodding at Rhys. “If I’m needed, send Nuala. I’ll be with you as soon as I can be.” 

“Don’t worry Az,” Rhys responded with a warm, contented smile. He’d been wearing that smile so often nowadays; Mor loved Feyre so much for that. “I don’t think any of us will be doing much other than eat and sleep today.” 

Mor waited exactly two minutes and eight seconds before anticipation got the better of her. She had an invitation to accept. “Right,” she said, standing and slamming her hands down on the table, “I can stand it no longer. I can feel that drink asshole-McShmoozester spilled all over my hair, and honestly, I think it might be dissolving my gorgeous mane. I’m off to have a long, long, long  _ bath _ .” Giving a giggling Feyre a charming wave and a wink, Mor ended her performance and left them to their morning banter, her easy expression vanishing as she hurried down the halls. Pretending to be okay and normal had been so easy, so why was it now so hard just to  _ breathe _ ? 

At over five hundred years old, she knew how to prepare for almost every situation, and knew how to act accordingly. Thus, it was extremely unsettling to find herself most unfamiliar with the etiquette of how to proceed. Sex she knew how to handle, certainly. Drunkenly calling a man she respected (and possibly-in-denial-loved) a slut? And worse, enjoying it? How was she to proceed from there? 

And yet, regardless of the guilt and shame that swam through her head, as if she were back to being a child fearful of a man’s touch, part of her was breathless for an entirely other reason. Her fingers ached to knot in silk black hair again. As she tried to plan for the situation she was about to face, far too often she found her thoughts painting a picture of Azriel beneath her yet again, gasping, begging for her to fuck him harder. She dared not ponder why she found that image so exhilarating. 

“Az?” She called, knocking upon his chamber door. It opened, a shadow curling around it before shrinking back to the man sat on the far side of the room, watching her through the crack in the doorway. 

“Mor. Come in.” She complied, closing the door. A stray shadow slipped behind her, and pushed shut the lock.  

Rising from where he’d perched at his desk, Azriel walked over to the lovely green china tea set that had been put out on a tray at his desk, and picked up the pot. “Care for some?” He asked as he poured two cups without awaiting her reply. She was always grateful for a hot drink in disturbing situations, the heat calming her nerves. She took her cup with a nod of thanks and brought it close, bathing her face in the rising steam and inhaling slowly. Jasmine, her favorite. 

“I apologise,” Azriel said, setting the teapot down and removing the leaves to prevent it from souring, “for last night.” Straightening, he turned to her. She barely recognised him, the formal set of his shoulders, the cold hardness to his expression. As if she were a stranger. As if she meant nothing to him at all. “And I understand completely if you can no longer think of me as- think of me as a friend. However, I ask that you don’t tell the others. My greatest wish is to continue serving Rhys, and hearing about- about this may risk complicating that. I-”

“Azriel,” Mor interrupted, placing her still full cup on the table, stepping closer, “what the hell are you going on about?” Cauldron, for one so smart, he could be so thick sometimes. However, hearing him go on like that had had one benefit: she’d made up her mind, and it had settled in the last place she’d expected. Damn him for always knowing how to get to her, intentionally or not. “We were both in that room together. We said and did those things together. None of this rests solely on your shoulders.” She grinned, trying to break that dead expression on his face. “We’re  _ both _ filthy bastards.”

He didn’t laugh, didn’t even flinch, his eyes and face as unreadable as ever, looking long and hard back at her. “Cauldron, Azriel. It’s not even that unusual.” He made to protest, but she cut him off, “I don’t think it is, Azriel. In fact, I think it’s healthy to work through this kind of stuff.” A soft, fond smile broke upon her lips, and despite the subject matter, she felt a tender kind of warmth kindling in her chest. “I’ve never seen you as happy or as open as you were at the end of last night. You haven’t smiled like that in… years.

“We can’t be kids again, Az. I can’t fall in love with you again. We can’t be like Feyre and Rhys, staring doe-eyed at one another and planning our lives together. Not after last time.” She tried not to flashback to those times, ploughing ahead with her decision. “However, that doesn’t mean we can’t fuck.” If she laced her voice with just a hint of a seductive edge, she could hardly be blamed. Let them both pretend this was just sex, just fucking, and that they’d never felt anything more. Things as they were, she had a feeling they both needed it, even if she already knew it was doomed to go so terribly wrong.

“We’ll keep it hidden and away from the others. I don’t need Cassian being insufferable, and there’s a wedding coming. It wouldn’t do to distract from the couple’s big day. But when we do have time.” And with the war over, they had far, far too much free time. She stepped closer, sealing the distance between them as she took his jaw in both her hands and met his gaze. “I am going to fuck you, Azriel. And together, we are going to work through whatever this is. We’re going to find out why your shadows are playing up.” Leaning in, she planted the faintest of kisses to the sensitive spot tucked beneath his ear. “And I am going to learn every way possible to make you scream. Understood?”

When she drew back, she found the stony expression on his face had melted entirely. He’d paled, eyes searching her for some explanation for her words. “You heard me, Azriel. And I’m not joking. All this peace and joviality is making me restless.” She held out her hand as if it were all a business arrangement. “Shall we agree to do this properly? No more drunk mistakes. No accidents. I don’t want you exploring this with some stranger down an alley in Velaris.”  _ I want to keep you safe. _ “If we’re doing this, we’re doing it for us. The second it goes too far, we stop. No arguments.” 

He didn’t say a word. All too slowly, he took her hand in his, his fingertips brushing her palm ever so gently. Instead of shaking it, he brought her knuckles to his lips and kissed the backs of her fingers, not once looking away from her eyes. “No arguments. If you ever want to end it, just say the word.” The depth of devotion in his voice nearly made her cry, despite the thrill running through her bones, despite how relieved she was that he hadn’t laughed in her face. He could be so  _ kind _ . What would she ever do if she ended up really hurting him?

However, she was an old hand at masquerades. Thus, she donned her most charming smile and drew their joined hands to her, kissing the back of his in turn. “A pleasure doing business with you.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Had life been a romance novel, Mor could imagine the scene opening with: ‘They made love on the balcony all night’. 

But this was the furthest she’d ever been from fictional high society and gentlemen who trotted in on horseback. No high fae Lord with ten thousand gold a year, who owned half of Prythian, was going to come and save her and her family. Her life clearly just wasn’t that kind of novel.

That night, she fucked Azriel into the marble, hard. The rest of the Inner Circle had long gone to bed nursing headaches or wedding-planning induced fatigue, so there was no concern about their being discovered. Besides, something about this whole surreal scenario left Mor _ wanting  _ someone to walk in on them, to confirm that this wasn’t all a bizarre, rather revealing hallucination. 

Naked, his bare back and dark skin contrasted against the stark white of the marble balcony, Azriel was panting harder than ever before. They weren’t trying anything new that night, weren’t venturing down into the world he’d found himself craving, and yet she still felt more raw and exposed than ever. This time, they were both sober. This time, they both knew exactly what they were doing. 

“Fuck, Mor,” he gasped as she rode him, straddling his lap. Head tipped back, eyes closed, he looked the perfect picture of ecstasy. No chance was she allowing that. 

“Don’t you dare,” Mor said, her voice a low murmur. With the hand she’d fixed tersely in his hair - it had felt so  _ good _ to twist the strands around her fingers and feel that satisfying pull, like scratching a day old itch - she forced him to sit up, swallowing a growl in response to the injured whimper he released as she positioned him. “You don’t get to just lie there whilst I do all the work.” She guided his face between her breasts. “ _ Show me _ how much you want this.” 

He was quick to obey. Whatever this was, it came naturally to him, and soon he was lavishing her frozen skin with adoration. His mouth, once so quiet and restrained, now tore at her chest, sucking dark, blossoming hickies across her collarbone and teasing her nipples with teeth. He’d never been rough like this before, scared to so much as touch her back in the day. Silently, she’d thought him broken when he’d spoken of finding pain arousing, yet here she could understand it. Each sharp nip of his incisors flooded her system with adrenaline, overrode her brain with questions of ‘ _ why are you allowing this? _ ’ and an even bolder deep, deep satisfaction as she ignored it. Because she could. 

Bucking her hips harder, harder still, grinding against the muscled planes of his pelvis, she kept one hand tangled in his hair whilst the other gripped his shoulder. “Don’t you dare fucking stop,” she growled in his ear, fingernails digging into his flesh. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

Around them, his shadows were spasming. Each time she shoved her hips roughly forwards, driving friction down the shaft of his cock, the darkness would expand and shiver. Once she’d adjusted to the strange shapes it formed, she began to notice other things. How it lightened around Azriel, like a small halo emanated from his skin. How stray tendrils licked across her own skin, and she could  _ feel _ them, cold,  _ so cold _ , even against the icy breeze of the winter night. 

Watching them, she leaned in, slowing the rocking of her hips, and kissed the swell of Azriel’s shoulder, her lips kind and lingering. The shadows edged back in, condensing through the shell of light around him and returning to him. She watched, waited, and noted how they remained. 

“Mor,” he begged into her ear, his own hips arching up, seeking that brutality again. Shadows or not, she was happy to comply. With her spare hand she shoved him back into the marble and fucked him till her insides were raw and screaming around him, and after one more sly kiss, she bit him. No playful nipping, she clenched her teeth into his flesh, muscle, bone, and bit him  _ hard _ . It felt unreal, thinking how she was biting Azriel, yet what perfection. The resistance she could feel as her teeth were met with muscle and bone, the heat as her tongue was pressed back in her throat by the contours of his body, all of it delicious. Not to mention the way he  _ moaned _ .

“Fuck. Fu-  _ fuck _ .” He came with a tremble she felt through her _ teeth _ , a thought that both delighted and bewildered her. His muscles shook with the force of orgasm for what felt like an age, his forehead collapsed upon her shoulder as he caught his breath, chest heaving. “Fuck.” 

“You came without my permission,” Mor said, doing her best to sound stern when her insides were reeling. How had that felt so good? She hadn’t quite tipped over the edge, and thus she was still riding on that high.

  
“Don’t worry,” she said coolly, taking his jaw in her fingertips and tilting his head up to look at her. “I’ll make sure you make up for it next time.” Slipping him out of her with one hand, she took in three steadying breaths and then sat back opposite him. With a smirk, she parted her legs. “Now,” she said, leaning back on her hands and pushing her hips forward, displaying herself in her entirety to him, “get to work.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone is actually still reading this, awesome. It's only getting smuttier from here on out. Some plot might happen too, I guess. I am also planning on starting a Nesta-centric longfic (80-100k) that will be a pacific rim AU fusion, so if that interests you at all, watch this space. 
> 
> Sorry not sorry @abookandacoffee. Also I'm so curious as to how you're a BAD ADULT. Especially when you're saying this to ME (see source a, pictured above).


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